Abstract
Lubricants are often contaminated by water in different ways. Water-polluted lubricants extremely accelerate wear corrosion, leading to the deterioration of lubricity performance. Recently, multiphase media superwettability has been developed to endow one surface with compatible functions, such as on-demand separation of oily wastewater. However, realizing the robustness of the dual superlyophobic surface to solve water-caused lubricant deterioration and water contamination as needed remains challenges. Herein, a robust dual superlyophobic membrane is presented to realize on-demand separation for various lubricant—water emulsions. Compared to pure lubricants, the purified lubricants have equivalent tribology performance, which are much better than that of water-polluted lubricants. The as-prepared membrane maintains dual superlyophobicity, high-efficient for water or lubricant purification, and excellent tribology performance of the purified lubricant, even after immersion in hot liquids for 24 h, multicycle separation, and sandpaper abrasion for 50 cycles. Water-polluted lubricant extremely accelerates wear corrosion to promote catalytic dehydrogenation of lubricants, generating too much harmful carbon-based debris. This work shows great guiding significance for recovering the tribology performance of water-polluted lubricants and purifying water by the dual superlyophobic membrane.
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This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51735013 and 51905520).
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Siyang ZHAO. He is now a Ph.D. candidate at Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China, under the supervision of Prof. Zhiguang GUO. His current scientific interests are focused on the removal of trace water in lubricating oils.
Weimin LIU. He received his Ph.D. degree in lubricating materials and tribology from Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China, in 1990. After that, he joined State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication (LSL) at LICP, CAS, China. From June 1993 to June 1994, he worked as a visiting scholar at The Pennsylvania State University, USA. In 2013 and 2016, he was elected the member of CAS and the fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), respectively. Currently, he is a professor of LICP, CAS, China, and the head of State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication. His research interests mainly focus on space and aviation lubrication, high-performance lubricating materials, and tribochemistry.
Jinxia HUANG. She received her Ph.D. degree from Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China, in 2015. After that, she joined Prof. Zhiguang GUO’s Biomimetic Materials of Tribology (BMT) group in LICP, CAS, China. Her current scientific interests are focused on the biomimetic materials of tribology and their applications.
Zhiguang GUO. He received his Ph.D. degree from Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China, in 2007. After that, he joined Hubei University, China. From October 2007 to August 2008, he worked in University of Namur (FUNDP), Belgium, as a postdoctor. From September 2008 to March 2011, he worked in the Funds of National Research Science (FNRS), Belgium, as a “Charge de Researcher”. During February 2009-February 2010, he worked in Department of Physics, University of Oxford, UK, as a visiting scholar. Now he is a professor and the dean of School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hubei University, China. His current scientific interests are focused on the biomimetic materials of tribology and their applications.
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Zhao, S., Xu, C., Zhang, J. et al. A robust membrane with dual superlyophobicity for solving water-caused lubricant deterioration and water contamination. Friction 11, 1442–1454 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-022-0677-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-022-0677-7